Dialectics is when there are two things

Going down a hill, I was going 10mph over the speed limit. I had the cruise control set to 5mph over the speed limit and didn't know that unlike my bf's car, it doesn't slow itself down when the speed goes over to what you've set the cruise control to. Judge me for speeding. Whatever.

The cop pulls me over. Takes my license and registration. Asks me to step out of the vehicle. I ask him why I need to step out of the vehicle. He says he doesn't have to tell me why.

I tell him I'd like to look up the state law first. He tells me the law is to do whatever he says, pushes my phone out of my hand, and opens the car door.

I tell him that the only times I or anyone I've known have ever been asked to step out of the car during a traffic stop were when the officer suspected that they were impaired (it happened to me in 2019 when I was driving my friend home and the cop saw her drunk and passed out in the back seat. I immediately got handcuffed without being told why and wasn't given a breathalyzer until i got to the police station. They let me go after that, but didn't give me my stuff back. Or my money. They robbed me that night. When I called to get my stuff back they said they didn't have it. This is why I didn't want to immediately get out of the car for this traffic stop.)

He grabs me by my arm and starts pulling me. I tell him to let me go. He tells me to shut the fuck up and do what I'm told. Grabs my head with his other hand and tries to pull me out by my hair.

I pick my phone back up and dial 911 to let them know that an officer is trying to pull me out of my car without reasoning. They tell me, in a very annoyed tone, to just do whatever the officer says.

At this point, the cop is pulling my arm backwards against the car, and I'm scared he's going to break it. I start panicking.

A 2nd officer, his supervisor, walks up and rips my keys out of the ignition, breaking them.

I'm already freaking out at this point and impulsively reach out my hand to stop him. He says "oh, you REALLY fucked up now" and grabs me along with the other cop. They grab me by my hair, neck, and arms.

They throw me onto the highway.

Cars were coming. They had to swerve to get around me. Truck tires pass my head about a foot away.

My chin hits the ground. They shove my face into the road. One of them is sitting on me and the other is standing on me so I can't get up. I'm extremely claustrophobic. I start screaming for help. They tell me to shut the fuck up or I'm getting tased and hold a taser up to my back. I stop screaming, but I can't stop crying and hyperventilating. They shove the taser into my back even harder and tell me to stop crying or they'll use it. I say "I'm sorry, I'll comply" and hold my breath. They pull my arms behind my back and handcuff me, very tightly.

The supervisor pulls me away to talk to me separately.

He does not. Stop. Talking. I get a huge lecture about how if I would've just done what I was told, I wouldn't have gotten hurt, but also, he "saved me from getting hurt worse and thrown in jail" by pulling me away from the other cop.

He tells me that he "doesn't care what bullshit advice that i learned from tiktok." I tell him I don't use tiktok, I just had a bad experience with corrupt cops in the past. He tells me that he doesn't care, I shouldn't assume all cops are corrupt just because they are, and he's not like those shitty cops.

He goes on to tell me about how they had to do what they did because they've both had people attempt to hurt them during traffic stops before and there was no way to be sure that I wouldn't do it too. He says that when i reached for my phone I could've been reaching for a gun.

I say "you just told me not to assume something bad will happen to me just because I had a bad experience in the past."

He tells me to stop talking.

He says "what is it called when someone is grabbing you and pushing you? Assault. And that's what you were doing to us. So it was safe to assume that we were in danger."

I say "That's what was being done to me, and considering that i wasn't told why, i think it's a normal reaction to try to stop someone from doing that in that situation. I was terrified."

"That's different. What you did was assault on an OFFICER. You shouldn't have put your hands on him."

Then he goes on rambling again. All while chain smoking cigarettes.

He talks about how great of a cop he is. He repeats that he "saved me" from the other cop immediately arresting me and sending me to jail. He talks about how i could be sitting next to murderers right now and starts to tell me graphic details of some of the cases he's dealt with.

I start hyperventilating so hard that I can't breathe. He tells me to shut the fuck up, but then gently pushes my hair out of my face and says "hey. Smile. You're lucky."

I force myself into breathing normally.

He says "man, that's the first time I've ever had to pull out my taser! I could've used it for the first time today! Ha ha ha!"

I start crying again.

"HEY! LAUGH! I'm trying to joke with you and lighten the mood!"

He continues to boast about how great and nice of a cop he is. He asks if i have kids. I tell him yes, and that he's waiting at home for me. He tells me about his kids. Says he's trying to relate to me.

At one point he asks if the other cop can search my car. I know they technically can't if they don't have a warrant and I say no. But I didn't want to get hurt again, and I didn't have anything illegal in the car, so I complied.

He asks me if I have anything in the car that i shouldn't have. I tell him no, but I brought some of my Adderall with me in a different bottle. He asks me to pull up my medical info to prove it's a prescription. He sees that I'm also prescribed pain medication and ask about it. I tell him about my physical issues and chronic pain.

"Oh, you think YOU'RE in pain? I got [list of injuries] while serving overseas so imagine how much pain it caused me when you forced me to pull you out of the car. Do you think i wanna go home to my family and tell them I got hurt because of a 130 pound female?"

"No, sir. I'm sorry."

I realize at this point that the only way out is by sucking up to he cops.

He tries to strike casual conversation. He says "did you know that in the town you live in, one in every 3 people has an STD?"

"I suppose that makes sense since it's a college town."

"Yeah, I just wanted to warn you so you know to be careful, just in case."

"Thank you, but i have a long term partner, so i don't think that'll be an issue for me." I force out a laugh in between tears.

"SEE! All you had to do was smile and laugh!"

He removes my handcuffs and tells me to stay still or I'll get tased.

"Thank you."

"So what do you think your boyfriend is gonna tell you?"

"That i should've listened. He'll probably be mad at me." (No the fuck he won't lol)

"Yeah, I bet you learned your lesson. I'll go try to convince the other officer not to throw you in jail. It's up to him though. Stay here and don't move. My dog in the car will alert me if you do."

I stand and wait.

They approach me with two tickets and tell me i can go home to my child. The first cop tells me someone shot at him two days ago. I tell him I'm sorry he went through that and that his job must be hard.

They pat themselves on the back for being such nice, empathetic cops.

I go to the car. It takes me a minute to start it because I'm trying to twist just the metal part of the key. It finally starts and I drive the rest of the way home slowly.

I didn't know until afterwards that they put down that I was going faster than I actually was. It's a higher charge for going 20+ over.

I can't get pictures of every bruise on my own nor do I want to show all of them, especially my face. But these ones are from the handcuffs and from having my arm grabbed.

I really need help.

Cashapp: $niceworkbonedaddy

Paypal: yanidork

On a less depressing note. You wanna see my shirt. My shirt fuckin rocks

I could not sleep last night because of the anxiety and I woke up 2 hours late so that's super fun. I have to leave in an hour because it starts at 10 and I'm an hour away

On the bright side, my boyfriend took the day off so he could go with me, so I won't be doing it alone 🥹

I'm gonna be pleading not guilty to both tickets and invoking my right to stay silent so this is just the first court date 😭

Anyway

My check was over $600 short this month due to a Medicare premium that medicaid used to pay for. I make $826/month on SSDI.

I was given $217 to last me the entire month. They told me they'll be taking $200 more next month. I closed my donation campaign right before it happened (check the notes for updates).

I could really use some help taking care of myself and my kids this month. I have to make four 2-hour trips this month for appointments and will need gas to do so. I already maxed out the amount i can borrow from cashapp & they decreased my borrow limit due to not paying things back quick enough so that made me lose a hundred more bucks. My uncle was going to give me $400 to help me out, but he won't give it to me until I go out to dinner with him apparently and I'm not gonna be in town until the end of the month.

"personality predates ideology" is a quirky little rhetorical sleight of hand that implies that: 1. people have an innate inclination toward certain or other aspects of personality, 2. ideologies form out of the emotional impulse of (a certain group of) people. what this boils down to then, if we sit down and analyze it, is that it implies certain people are naturally and innately predisposed to agree with particular ideologies, beliefs, etc. this is, to put it mildly, incredibly idealistic and very very dangerous.

this is a belief that's taken a lot of forms and different ways of being expressed, so specifically what i'm honing in on is the time famous gringo comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan said the quiet part out loud in an interview. quote: "people are not motivated by ideological codes, people are motivated by impulse and construct ideological codes to justify and rationalize what they were already going to do. [...] on the level of individuals and civilization, personality predates ideology, meaning that before you were a fascist, you were a bully and an asshole." again, i think this is symptomatic of a larger, yes, ideological trend, and i don't take like, personal issue with the fact this one guy belives that. if anything i'm thankful, because him saying it this way makes the surrounding concept much more easy to analyze!

so let's move around the center thesis point and analyze the surrounding context. many ideologues have spoken at length about the fact that understanding fascism as some kind of catch-all badpersonist ideology is (to not use the also correct term "unserious") not just untrue, but detrimental to how we can study the material weight and implications of fascist ideologies, as opposed to other ideologies that are, frankly, equally as violent and reactionary. "bully" and "asshole" are terms that mean nothing other than like, a vague social idea of "person who other people find abrasive toward those disenfranchised in a setting of comradery" or really just "person who others don't like very much"! to claim that there are people who are fundamentally predisposed (from birth in some models, but really even without that) to being "bad people" as individuals, that then go and adopt the "ideology by and for bad people" is, well. calling it reactionary is genuinely lowballing it. and that kind of sets the tone for the idea, right?

to get really dialectical with it and get into the negative flipside of the idea, think of the common non-denominational leftist slogan of "i wasn't radicalized to the left, i just have empathy and care about people". it's kind of the flip-side to this belief, right? "i don't need a strong framework to inform my political conceptualization, all i need is hope and to #lovethyneighbor! that's true leftism!" but that's not really effective, is it? i don't make the allusion to christianity for no reason, many christians who live good, sinless, charitable lives, are also like, insanely reactionary in a lot of very particular topics! feelings are fickle, and often do not reflect material reality. and so is "personality", so is "belief", these are frameworks that reduce the human experience into the very point at the start, that flatten discursive knowledge, scientific analysis, etc., into being secondary (if even relevant!) against "impulse" and "instinct". personally, i think it's a bleak view!

the first line about "ideological codes" and "impulse" seems to think it's putting the cart squarely after the horse, but looking closer at it, it's doing the exact opposite. sure, a child is not birthed with a fully fledged ideological framework, but a child is not birthed with a fully charted path of "impulses", either. and this is because a child (and therefore all people!) does not exist in an empty vaccuum, their mind does not develop away from a historical context.

people are shaped by context, people interface with other people, and the people of the present grapple constantly with the weight of history. the weight of a history that, in fact, crystalizes ideology within those who live in it! people do not develop ideological frameworks by themselves, their ideological frameworks are shaped by their context. and the same goes for their personality, for their "impulses", for their "instinct". all of these things are built and trained, not innate. people are not, in fact, motivated squarely by an ideological dogma, but they aren't motivated by base impulse either! people are motivated by context, a context that includes both the interpersonal and the broader ideological machinations that have existed ever since society has.

now we circle back to the core phrase. "personality predates ideology", and to your question, which i'll translate for ease of answering into: "does ideology create personality?" both the ideas of "ideology" and "personality" are... very broad concepts, to say the least. at a glance, it definitely seems like a chicken and egg situation. but just like with the chicken and the egg, it's a solvable issue! it's just an answer that may seem unsatisfying without its context.

in short, neither is really true! personality, being the vague thing it is, can't be much argued to have a "starting point", if we define it by a particular set of social traits that form an "identity". what we can say is that the personality of one or multiple individuals did not give rise to the fact that ideological frameworks began to be created as society began to set. ideological frameworks are also messy to define, even if we limit ourselves to the idea of "political ideologies". but what's certain is that, in the thousands of years of human history, frameworks to define society were needed for the sake of, well, defining said society! and that had less to do with personality than it did with the material conditions that shaped societies, and therefore, the people in said societies.

think of the context of the world (geography, biology, every influencial factor on the first societies) as a line, from which the individual personalities of the people in that context split off. eventually the ideology that forms society splits off the same line of context too, and they almost immediately begin to weave together, like a single thread turning into a woven rope. the ideology of the society in which the individual is raised is influential in their personality, and as society develops, ideology too becomes part of the context that informs that individual development, that shapes the individual's personality. but ideology is now so natural in society, it's not able to be influenced by the individual, but rather, by history as a whole.

so, the answer is twofold. the personalities of each and every human individually in all of history were not informed by ideology, because ideology developed with society, and they're both vague terms to define when looking at such a long timeframe. but both those ancient personalities and ideologies were built by their context. and as generations grew within society, ideology became part of that very same context. and now, in the modern day, the ideologies of the world are so inextricably woven into the context of each individual's life, that claiming that ideology is not a major factor in the development of the individual's personality can only really be said if your idea of "personality" is an intrinsic characteristic of a person, and not something shaped by their context. for what i'd argue is basically all of human history, i'd say yes, personality is (mostly if not entirely) created by the ideological context of the individual.

(as an aside: it's also important to understand that even with this model, personality is not actually relevant to ideology! ideology stands without the necessity for an individual's personality, because it needs to be analyzed through the context of history, not the other way around!)

the jigsaw critic: people die in saw traps because they are trying to escape dangerous machinery under stress